Allen and China – great news! -.a new (first-time!) edition of his Collected Poems is due out very soon in that country (hopefully in November) – translated and edited by the young Ming Hui and published by Shanghai ’99.…..

There’s, a little Chinese background.

From our friend Jim Cohn‘s estimable web-site, The Museum of American Poetics:
“In 1982, Allen Ginsberg was a member of a U.S. Writers’ Delegation that hosted writers from the Peking Writers’ Union of the People’s Republic of China at a conference at UCLA. In 1984, Ginsberg traveled to China as a member of this American writers’ delegation that also included Beat Generation poet Gary Snyder and others. During his China trip, which he extended beyond the one-month official delegation visit, Allen gave lectures and readings in Beijing and Shanghai. Wishing to see Chinese Buddhism in practice, he visited the Han Shan temple in Suzhou and the Xixia Temple in Nanjing where, in the sangha (community) meditation room, he sat cross-legged with the abbot for about 20 minutes and then joined the monks for a late class. Returning to Shanghai, (he) purchased a stone seal with his Buddhist name, “Dharma Lion,” engraved on it. In Baoding, (he) composed poems that were published in White Shroud(1986) – “I Love Old Whitman So,” “Written in My Dream by W.C. Williams,” “One Morning I Took a Walk in China” and “Reading Bai Juyi.”

Here’s the opening lines of “ One Morning I Took a Walk in China”:

“Students danced with wooden silvered swords, twirling on hard packed muddy earth/as I walked out Hebei University’s concrete North Gate,/across the road a blue capped man sold fried sweet dough-sticks, brown as new boiled doughnuts.in the gray light of sky, past popular tree trunks, white washed cylinders topped/with red band the height of a boy – Children with school satchels sang & walked past me…”

And here’s the opening lines of “Reading Bai Juyi “:

“I’m a traveler in a strange country/China and I’ve been to many cities/Now I’m back in Shanghai, days/under warm covers in a room with electric heat -/ a rare commodity in this country -/hundreds of millions shiver in the north/students rise at dawn and ran around the soccer field/Workmen sing songs in the dark to keep themselves warm/while I sleep late, smoke too much, cough…”

[Caption: “Downtown Baoding, across from Department store, behind walled gate, this huge public garden’s kept up – it was attached to some rich Merchant-official before Revolution – Photo snapped by student interpreter, everyone seemed interested. I liked the moon-bridge’s mirror-mouth oval – November 1984. Allen Ginsberg”]

“Ginsberg’s work is always going to be difficult to publish. [though not impossible – sic] – Earlier this year, I had a shipment of Ginsberg books sent from Scotland, but sadly they were confiscated due to references to the Dalai Lama. I’m sure that events surrounding Ginsberg’s old friend, Ai Weiwei, have also impacted the availability of his work in Chinese in recent years.

It was to my great surprise that I found his most famous poem, “Howl,” being taught (uncensored) at my deeply conservative university a few months ago as part of their American Literature course. Yet there is a big difference between what is allowed to be said in English and what is allowed to be said in Chinese… especially when it can be contextualized as part of a foreign culture and not applicable to China.”

“A poem like “Howl,” which feels dated and lugubrious to many of us professors [sic] , still has the power to inspire young people whose freedom of expression is constricted ….. “Howl” might not be so frivolous after all [sic]. Chinese people are more free now than they’ve been in several generations, but many of them remain acutely aware of the paternalistic limitations imposed upon them by their families and by the government. Their Confucian heritage stresses filial piety, so they tend not to be noisily rebellious in the Allen Ginsberg mode, but that does not mean they are complacent or content..”.

One such non-complacent Chinese student was/is writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Duo – Her essay “Reading Howl in China” may be found here

Regarding Beat Generation literature in translation Jim Cohn has just recently put up two new pages spotlighting the two pre-eminent scholars and translators of the Beats in China –Zhang Ziqing and the late Wen Chu-an (1941-2005)

Zhang Ziqing,, sometime professor at Nanjing University, and editor of the ambitious and impressive Ershi Shiji Meiguo Shige Shi (A History of 20th Century American Poetry), 1995, 1997 – new edition forthcoming) remains a strong and inspiring presence.

Zhang is colloborating with Jim Cohn and David Cope on Bridges Across The Pacific – An Anthology of Chinese and American Empathy Poems (similarly forthcoming). For more on that project -see Kirpal Gordon’s interview with David Cope – here